I am still not clear in my mind as to the time scale or scales of Antarctic land ice accumulation and calving.
Exceptionally hot moist air radiates exceptional heat to outer space as it passes over the South Pole. But that exceptional cooling factor doesn't immediately cool the general atmosphere. Instead, it is stored as a weight of snow or ice that only with a delay presses down on the land ice. It takes time to squeeze out the ice to the edge of the land and into the sea, to melt and eventually cool the oceans.
One thought is that this ocean cooling might be continuous, so that this year's snow might trigger this year's ocean cooling, and we would have a negative feedback stabilising ocean temperatures on a one-year time scale. This would be slower than the tropical storm atmospheric circulatory convection temperature negative feedback stabilisation mechanism, that works on a time scale of hours or days.
Another thought is that this ocean cooling might take thousands or tens of thousands of years to proceed. What would trigger the calving on that time scale? Is this a dynamical factor in the hundred-thousand-year glaciation—deglaciation cycle of the current ice age?
Perhaps there are several time scales at work here?
Ned Nikolov says the drop in cloud albedo over the last few decades does not correspond to a change in cosmic ray ionisation promoted by Henrick Svensmark. We don’t know why cloud albedo has decreased.
A note from Philip Mulholland, he writes, "Hi Jennifer, A little anecdote from my British Geological Survey past. A colleague had spent a full year in Antarctica at a coastal research station. He described a day when the weather changed: instead of the typical cold dry southerly katabatic wind that flows downslope off the ice-cap, the wind turned to the north coming in off the Southern Ocean and it got to be "all hot and snowy". Everything is relative, and it matters which way the wind is blowing.
I am still not clear in my mind as to the time scale or scales of Antarctic land ice accumulation and calving.
Exceptionally hot moist air radiates exceptional heat to outer space as it passes over the South Pole. But that exceptional cooling factor doesn't immediately cool the general atmosphere. Instead, it is stored as a weight of snow or ice that only with a delay presses down on the land ice. It takes time to squeeze out the ice to the edge of the land and into the sea, to melt and eventually cool the oceans.
One thought is that this ocean cooling might be continuous, so that this year's snow might trigger this year's ocean cooling, and we would have a negative feedback stabilising ocean temperatures on a one-year time scale. This would be slower than the tropical storm atmospheric circulatory convection temperature negative feedback stabilisation mechanism, that works on a time scale of hours or days.
Another thought is that this ocean cooling might take thousands or tens of thousands of years to proceed. What would trigger the calving on that time scale? Is this a dynamical factor in the hundred-thousand-year glaciation—deglaciation cycle of the current ice age?
Perhaps there are several time scales at work here?
Ned Nikolov says the drop in cloud albedo over the last few decades does not correspond to a change in cosmic ray ionisation promoted by Henrick Svensmark. We don’t know why cloud albedo has decreased.
A note from Philip Mulholland, he writes, "Hi Jennifer, A little anecdote from my British Geological Survey past. A colleague had spent a full year in Antarctica at a coastal research station. He described a day when the weather changed: instead of the typical cold dry southerly katabatic wind that flows downslope off the ice-cap, the wind turned to the north coming in off the Southern Ocean and it got to be "all hot and snowy". Everything is relative, and it matters which way the wind is blowing.